‘Next-generation’ optical tweezers trap tightly without overheating

Engineers at Harvard have created a device that may make it easier to isolate and study tiny particles such as viruses.

Their plasmonic nanotweezers, revealed this month in Nature Communications, use light from a laser to trap nanoscale particles. The new device creates strong forces more efficiently than traditional optical tweezers and eliminates a problem that caused earlier setups to overheat.

Optical tweezers have been an essential tool in biophysics for several decades, often used for studying cellular components such as molecular motors. Researchers can trap and manipulate the proteins that whip a flagellum, for example, and measure the force of its swimming motion.

“We can get beyond the limitations of conventional optical tweezers, exerting a larger force on a nanoparticle for the same laser power,” says principal investigator Ken Crozier, associate professor of electrical engineering at SEAS.

Three weeks after a remarkably nasty presidential election, emotions remain raw, as was evidenced when the Trump and Clinton camps met for the first time at Harvard Kennedy School for a debriefing conference this week.

A new Harvard center on health and happiness had its academic coming-out party Friday, hosting a daylong symposium that highlighted what science does and doesn’t say about the interaction of health and happiness, and identifying pathways where investigators should probe next.